Bouncing Away from Bounce Rate

There is an undeniable need for marketers to prove out our strategies and craft relevant, actionable insights to move forward. Ultimately, we have to demonstrate the worth of our campaigns if we hope to continue creating future campaigns. This can be particularly difficult when it comes to paid social media campaigns since it is relatively new and so fast paced.

Often times, we get hung up on specific metrics to measure results, but times, industry, and trends change. Because of this, we have to stay on top of how we are defining objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in relation to specific metrics in order to package up success.

As an example, the award for most misunderstood metric would have to go to bounce rate. Many marketers look to this metric to measure the success of their campaigns — the lower, the better, right? But what if they’re looking at this all wrong? Google Analytics explains it as “single-page sessions divided by the number of total sessions.” Okay, so what if we’re driving readers to a blog post? Essentially, they could read the entire blog, spend 5 minutes on the site, and still be considered a bounce. If we’re measuring success based on bounce rate, it would be pretty skewed here. Again, it all comes down to objective. If we set clear objectives from the start, we can more effectively measure success and optimize accordingly.

Marketing Metrics Done Right for Social Media

Let’s dive into a quick breakdown of overall strategies and the corresponding metrics that measure their success within a paid social media campaign. The two major areas we will dive into include Brand Awareness and Direct Response Conversion.

Landings to the site: Are we building up awareness around specific content pieces? Are we capturing this audience to retarget further down the funnel?

Click to landing/Cost per landing: How efficiently is our target market making it to the site?

Average time on site: Are these users spending an appropriate amount of time consuming and engaging with the content?

Secondary website engagements: How are users moving through the site to self-nurture?

Platform engagements such as likes, comments, and shares on paid posts: Are these people interested in what we have to say? How are they starting conversations around the brand messaging?

Page followers: Are people taking that second step to follow you organically? Do they want to see more content down the road?

Direct Response/Conversion: Activate your position in the market with intent by incorporating the brand platform into customer acquisition channels. Specific metrics include

Conversions/Funnel responses: Is your target market engaging with your content and moving through the funnel?

Conversion rate/Cost per conversion: How efficiently are users converting?

Bounce rate: Are people making it to your site and not taking the next step to convert?

Secondary website engagements: How are users moving through the site to self-nurture into a qualified lead?

Qualified leads: Are the converters qualified to move through the funnel and become satisfied customers?

As we know, social media can be a powerful tool for reaching a relevant audience where they spend a majority of their time. Social helps start the conversation and will play an important piece in the holistic puzzle of your marketing strategy. But if we measure success based solely on metrics like bounce rate, we would end up cutting social and losing out in the long run. We leverage social to showcase thought leadership pieces and allow users to self-nurture. We have to align our objectives to the right metrics if we want to succeed. This way we will be optimizing towards the tactics that are showing measurable results. An old saying goes “if you aren’t keeping score, how do you know if you are winning or losing?” This is even more true when it comes to social strategies, which can often seem a necessary but intangible component of a marketing strategy.

As technology continues to advance and we are able to see more relevant data, we must make sure to align as well. It is up to us to move with the changes and create actionable insights to move forward productively.